One is
sustained
by the table,
and brought around to the conversational tone.
and brought around to the conversational tone.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v22 - Sac to Sha
Sarcey easily
overtops in authority many new and brill-
iant confrères. He has been a voluminous
writer; he has been an incessant lecturer; and special gifts for main-
taining the courage of his convictions from the first have marked him
in both capacities.
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
M. Sarcey was born in 1828 at Dourdan, in the Department of the
Seine-et-Oise. He was an honor-pupil in the famous Charlemagne
School in Paris; and when pursuing his studies in the École Normale
in 1848, his fellow-students were About and Taine. His lively spirits
and independent ideas brought him into trouble when he was serv-
ing the Department of Public Instruction at Chaumont. He quitted
the school-teacher's desk for the newspaper office. In 1859 he began
critical work on the Figaro. He made a business of studying the
drama and dramatic criticism. He passed from the Figaro to various
other journals. Finally he became a permanent member of the staff
## p. 12826 (#248) ##########################################
12826
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
of Le Temps. To that well-known and influential newspaper he
contributes one or two articles every week in the year.
The plat-
form is also still his avocation; and his critical talks, delivered with a
charmingly colloquial manner,-a manner entirely in accord with his
theories of what a lecture should be,- are among the best attended
on the part of a public not too fond of that particular method of
receiving critical impressions.
M. Sarcey is not merely a specialist in the drama, and in the art
of acting: he is a man of fine and wide literary and artistic educa-
tion. He has a style which is like himself: clear, nervous, direct,
with touches of humor, and with occasionally the grace of true senti-
ment, but utterly opposed to the formalism which is to many writers
the only critical expression. He writes as he speaks,-off-hand, yet
never in a slipshod fashion. He has much humor, but always in good
taste. He believes in tradition on the stage; and in the making of
stage plays, he likes the melodrama better than the modern literary
play. He abhors the drama in which plot is not supreme; he hates
the faddists and the symbolists. His sense of himself is strong but
never offensive. He is respected as a philosopher of the play-house
and the play. His very weaknesses are so much a part of himself
that he would not be "Our Uncle Sarcey" without them; so no one
wishes them away. Past his middle years, he writes with the youth-
fulness of a man of twenty-five, united with the vast experience and
the maturity of a Nestor of the French theatre. His reputation is
international. All the world reads him, and nowhere else in the
world is there to be found a critic quite like him.
HOW A LECTURE IS PREPARED
From Recollections of Middle Life. ' Copyright 1893, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
HEN you have taken all your notes, when you have possessed
yourselves of at least the substance of all the ideas of
which the lecture is to be composed,-whether you have
them already arranged in fine order, or in the mass, still con-
fused, seething in your mind; when you have reached the moment
of preparation, when you no longer seek anything but the turn
to give them, the clearest, the most vivid and picturesque man-
ner in which to express them: when you are so far,-— mind, my
friend, never commit the imprudence of seating yourself at your
desk, your notes or your book under your eyes, a pen in your
## p. 12827 (#249) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12827
hand. If you live in the country, you doubtless have a bit of
a garden at your disposal; and in default of an alley of trees
belonging to you, a turn around the town where no one passes.
If you are a Parisian, you have in the neighborhood either the
Luxembourg or the Tuileries, or the Parc Monceau, or in any
case some wide and solitary street where you can dream in the
open air without too much interruption. If you have nothing of
all this, or if the weather be execrable, you have in your house
a room larger than the others: get up and walk. A lecture is
never prepared except while walking. The movement of the
body lashes the blood and aids the movement of the mind.
You have possessed your memory of the themes from the
development of which the lecture must be formed: pick out one
from the pile,— the first at hand, or the one you have most at
heart, which for the moment attracts you most, and act as if you
were before the public; improvise upon it. Yes, force yourself
to improvise. Do not trouble yourself about badly constructed
phrases, nor inappropriate words-go your way. Push on to the
end of the development, and the end once reached, recommence
the same exercise; recommence it three times, four times, ten
times, without tiring. You will have some trouble at first; the
development will be short and meagre: little by little around the
principal theme there will group themselves accessory ideas or
convincing facts, or pat anecdotes that will extend and enrich it.
Do not stop in this work until you notice that in thus taking up
the same theme you fall into the same development; and that
this development, with its turns of language and order of phrases,
fixes itself in your memory.
For, what is the purpose of the exercise that I recommend to
you? To prepare for you a wide and fertile field of terms and
phrases upon the subject that you are to treat. You have the
idea: you must seek the expression. You fear that words and
forms of phrase will fail you. A considerable number must be
accumulated in advance; it is a store of ammunition with which
you provide yourself for the great day. If you commit the im-
prudence of charging your memory with a single development
which must be definitive, you will fall into all the inconveniences
that I have brought to your attention: the effect is that of recit-
ing a lesson, and that is chilling; the memory may fail, you lose
the thread, and are pulled up short; the phrase has no longer
that air of negligence which improvisation alone gives, and which
## p. 12828 (#250) ##########################################
12828
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
charms the crowd. But you have prepared a half-dozen develop-
ments of the same idea without fixing them either in your mem-
ory or upon paper; you come before the audience. The mind
that day, if good fortune wills that you be in train, is more
alert, keener; the necessity of being ready at call communicates
to it a lucidity and ardor of which you would not have believed
yourself capable. It draws from that mass of words and phrases
accumulated beforehand, or rather that mass itself is set in
motion and runs toward it and carries it along; it follows the
flood; it has the appearance of improvising what it recites, and
in fact it is improvising even while reciting.
This is not a new method that I am inventing. The ancients,
alas! have worn the matter threadbare, and one must always go
back to the 'De Oratore' of the late Cicero. You have, I im-
agine, heard it told that Thiers, when he had an important speech
to make in the Chamber, first tried the effect of his arguments.
upon his friends and guests. He received much company, and
every evening he improvised, for a little circle of auditors, some
parts of his future speech. Visitors succeeded one another; and
he recommenced without weariness, and indeed without wearying
them, the same developments. He was firing at a target. After
all, isn't this the same kind of preparation that I have recom-
mended to you? You are not M. Thiers, you have not at hand
a series of listeners, who relieve one another to give you a
chance. I would not advise you to inflict the suffering of these
recommencements and hesitations upon your unfortunate wife.
Improvise for yourself, as if you were speaking before an audi-
ence.
It will doubtless happen more than once, in the course of
these successive improvisations, that you will hit upon a pictur-
esque word, a witty thrust, a happy phrase. Beware of storing
it in your memory, and on your return sticking it on paper like
a butterfly fastened on a blank sheet with a pin. If you bring
it to the lecture you will certainly wish to place it; and instead
of abandoning yourself to improvisation in the development of
your idea, you will be wholly occupied with directing it toward
the ingenious or brilliant sally that you have stored away.
will appear embarrassed and awkward in spite of yourself, and
three quarters of the time you will spoil the effect upon which
you counted. You will have sacrificed the thought to a mot, and
the mot will miss fire.
You
## p. 12829 (#251) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12829
That mot,-heavens! perhaps it will not be lost, though you
have taken pains to forget it. Who knows? Perhaps on some
great day, in the flow of improvisation, it will mount to the sur-
face, and you will see it suddenly spring up in the eddy of a
phrase. Oh, then throw it in boldly: it will be more attractive
from having the air of a "find," a bit of good luck.
The great principle to which we must always return is that
every lecture must be improvised; but have a care! one does
not improvise successfully before the public until one has twenty
times improvised in solitude, as one can only draw from a fount-
ain the water that one has taken care to put into it beforehand.
Many believe that at least the exordium and the peroration
may be learned by heart. It is not my opinion. I have tried.
it. I have never succeeded by that means. The most that I
would admit is, that in speaking before a new public, if one has
first to address to it some of the phrases of courtesy and thanks
demanded by custom, one may fix the expressions; because they
are pure formulas of politeness, and it is better to know them
by heart. It would be ridiculous to stumble in the phrase used
to congratulate a person on his good health or felicitate him upon
his marriage.
But every time that you have true ideas to express,—and they
enter into the exordium and the peroration as well as into the
rest, you must improvise. For the audience is always warned,
by a change of tone or manner, of the moment when the author
passes from recitation to pure improvisation, and it begins to be
distrustful; it constantly wonders if the improvisation may not
simply be an uncertain recitation; it loses confidence and resists.
You see! there is no real success to be had- I cannot too often
repeat it — unless the audience feels itself in some sort plunged,
completely bathed, in the deep and rapid flow of improvisation.
-
Even the peroration—and between ourselves, is there any
need in the lecture of what is called a peroration? The perora-
tion is the bellow of the mediocre actor upon the last verse of the
tirade. Great artists disdain the applause that it arouses. What
do you undertake to do when you speak? You wish to explain
and prove an idea. Well, when your demonstration is finished,
you put a period to it: that is the peroration. The worth of a
lecture is not in the ingenuity of an exordium, in the brilliant
fanfare of a peroration, in the number and splendor of the lus-
trously cut phrases sown through the discourse: it is in the
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
## p. 12830 (#252) ##########################################
12830
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
ensemble of its mass. Be sure that when you have faithfully
explained, developed, and revealed your idea; when you have,
with or without applause, impressed it upon the mind of your
audience, there is no success comparable to that.
Applause! flee from it as from the plague. An audience
that applauds is an audience that is given leisure from listening.
When it claps its hands, it's a sign that it is no longer bound
to the idea that you express; that it is no longer carried away,
rolled in the torrent of your discourse. It takes time to cry out
at a pretty phrase, to go into ecstasy over a flash of wit;-bad
business for you! for it forgets, while lingering to applaud
this, that which is the foundation of the lecture, the succession
of ideas and reasoning; you will have trouble in recapturing it
again.
I am so persuaded of this truth that I never leave my listen-
ers leisure to breathe. Of course it has happened to me, as to
my fellows, to touch here and there a corner of my discourse
with a more brilliant vivacity than usual, and to be conscious of
it; one is always conscious of that sort of thing. In such a case
I hardly launched the last word of the development before set-
ting out again at full speed for another series of ideas, cutting
short all tendency to applause. The confidence felt in an orator
evaporates in these bravos.
"Le vrai feu d'artifice est d'être magnanime," said M. Bel-
montet once upon a time, in a verse still celebrated.
The only
applause that counts, the only true applause, is the attention of
the audience, letting itself be so won by what you say that it no
longer thinks of the way in which you have said it.
You will doubtless be somewhat alarmed to know that it is
necessary to improvise a dozen times, and often more, each of
the subjects for development of which a lecture is composed.
You think to yourself that that is a tremendous task.
Yes, my
friends, there is nothing so long and so preoccupying as the prep-
aration of a lecture; you must make up your mind to it, if you
expect to follow that career. You will spend much time and
pains on it. Reassure yourselves, however: the work will become.
easier and more rapid as the habit of doing it grows with you.
Among these themes of development, as each lecturer approaches
only the subjects which relate to his studies and are within his
*True brilliancy comes from greatness of spirit. "
## p. 12831 (#253) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12831
range, some will often present themselves anew, and will only
require a summary preparation.
This humus of which I just now spoke to you— this prepared
heap of turns of speech, of exact and picturesque words — will
naturally grow richer; you will have it right at hand, and it will
serve the occasion without fresh effort.
There will come a time when, even with themes that are new
to you, you will no longer need, in order to establish the devel-
opment, ten or twelve successive improvisations. You will be
astonished to find with what facility, all at once, accessory ideas
and convincing facts will spring from the first improvisation, and
arrange themselves about the principal idea to sustain and clear
it. It will always be delicate work, but it will no longer be so
painful or so distressing. In a few hours, spread over two or
three days, you will get through the preparation of a lecture;
on condition, be it understood,—it is a prime condition,-of fully
possessing your subject.
You have improvised -picking them out one after the other
just as they came-each of the themes, so that it only remains
to put them in their place on the day of the final improvisation.
One of the great anxieties of a novice in lecturing is to know
how to pass from one theme to another; what Boileau called the
labor of transition, which used to give us blue terror in college.
Permit me to give you, just here, an axiom which I only suc-
ceeded in formulating after much reflection and many attempts:
In lecturing there is no transition.
When you have finished one development you enter upon
another; as at dinner, when you have eaten the soup you pass
to the entrée, and then to the roast. If there is no connection
between two ideas that succeed one another in your discourse,
what use is there in an imitation of one? When you speak, dis-
trust little strokes of finesse, tricks of style, bits of false ele-
gance: all this is worth nothing and serves no purpose. When
you have finished the explanation and the demonstration of the
idea, say honestly, if you must say something, "We have done
with that theme: let us pass to the next. "
But the best way would be to say nothing at all, and to enter
upon another order of development, with no warning but a short
silence.
If, on the contrary, there is a connection between the two
themes, do not disturb yourself,-you do not need expressly to
## p. 12832 (#254) ##########################################
12832
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
. mark it. It is useless to take the trouble to throw a bridge
between the two ideas: the moment that you, the orator, leap
from one to the other, the audience must leap after you, borne
on by the same impulse. The transition is no more than the
movement of your thought, that the audience necessarily follows
if you keep a firm hand upon it.
Ah, bless me! you, the lecturer, must have always present
to your mind, even through any digression you permit yourself,
your principal idea, and must not let your audience forget it;
you will have no trouble in leading them back when you yourself
return. And if by chance you are so far removed from it that
you do not know what road to take to reach it again, the sim-
plest way is frankly to announce your embarrassment. "It seems
to me that we are straying - where was I? Ah! I wished to
demonstrate to you that" and there is the thread picked up,
without great art, I confess: but I have remarked that the public
likes very well to have you make a confidant of it; speak to it
with open heart; if need be, ask counsel from it. It would not
do to make an artifice, a trick, of this means of exciting inter-
est and sympathy: the public is very sharp; it would easily see
that you played upon its credulity, and would range itself against
you. But if you have truly lost the thread, do not fear to say
frankly, "I do not know where I am put me on the right
track. " If a word escapes you, ask some one to prompt you.
They probably will not do so; but you will have had time to
find it while they search for it, or an excuse for not having
found it any sooner than the others. This excuse would not be
permitted to a man who recites, for it would pass for a failure
in memory; and to be brought up by a defeat of memory is the
worst that can happen in lecturing, as in the theatre and in the
pulpit. Laughter breaks forth invincibly. It never offends in
an orator who improvises; it may even please by a certain air
of sincerity and good-fellowship.
Is there a special tone and style for the lecture, as there is
for academic discussions,- for the pulpit, for the Sorbonne, for
the bar? That is a point to be looked into.
What is a lecture? It is, properly, to hold a conversation with
many hundreds of persons, who listen without interrupting. It
may be said, in general, that the tone of the lecture should be
that of a chat. But there it is, there are as many tones for
chatting as there are people who chat. Each one talks according
-
## p. 12833 (#255) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12833
to his temperament, his cast of mind, his turn of thought; each
talks as he is: and that which is pleasing in a chat is precisely
the discovery in it of the physiognomy of the talker. I can give
you only one piece of advice on this point: try to be, through
art, when once seated in the lecturer's chair, that which you nat-
urally are in your drawing-room, when you talk with five or six
persons and when you engross the conversation. Hear yourself
speak, observe yourself,- these introspections are become very
easy to us, thanks to the habit that we have contracted of analyz-
ing ourselves, and bend all your efforts to producing a lecture,
not according to your neighbor, who perhaps speaks better than
you, but yourself, only yourself, accentuating if possible the ren-
dering of your principal traits. I will condense my counsels in
this formula, which is not so humorous as it seems: It is permit-
ted you, it is even recommended to you, to have a "make-up »
for the lecture; but the "make-up" must be your own.
Your entire personality must shine forth in your discourse.
And that is the especial service rendered by this method of suc-
cessive improvisations that I have just prescribed for you. While
you are thus improvising alone, face to face with yourself, with-
out any witness to inspire you with a desire to pose, you are
free; you unconsciously set your entire being in full swing. The
mold is taken; you spread your personality before the public;
you are no longer a more or less eloquent, more or less affected
orator,—you are a man; you are yourself.
To be one's self: that is the essential thing.
Among the young lecturers discovered in these later times,
there is not one who has more quickly acquired a greater or
more legitimate reputation than M. Brunetière. Nevertheless
there is not one further removed in speaking from the ordinary
tone of familiar conversation. It would seem that the lecture, as
he practices it, would hardly come within the definition we have
given of the species, a conversation with an audience that holds.
its tongue. But what would you have ? That is the way that
Brunetière talks, and he talks as he is. He is a man of doc-
trine, who loves to dogmatize; he feels an invincible need of
demonstrating that which he advances, and to force conviction.
on those who hear him. He manœuvres his battalions of argu-
ments with a precision of logic and an ardor of temperament
that are marvelous. The phrases fall from his authoritative lips
with an amplitude, correctness, and force to which everything
XXII-803
---
___
## p. 12834 (#256) ##########################################
12834
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
bends. He is to be found entire in his lecture: the lecture is
excellent, then, because it is of him; or rather, because it is he.
Old Boileau had already expressed these truths in some verses
that are not among his best known:-
"Chacun pris dans son air est agréable en soi;
Ce n'est que l'air d'autrui qui peut déplaire en moi. ” *
If I should try to talk like Brunetière, I should be execrable:
it is possible, on the other hand, that if Brunetière tried to appro-
priate some of my methods he would not succeed; because, to
tell the truth, my air of good-fellowship, my familiarities of lan-
guage, my jovial anecdotes interspersed with frank laughter, my
unpolished and torrent-like phrases, are not methods, they are all
of a piece with myself; it is all I-a little more I perhaps
than I ordinarily am, but Brunetière is also probably a little more
himself in his lecture than in his chimney-corner at home.
May I be permitted to end these reflections on the art of the
lecturer with some practical advice?
Never dine before the lecture hour. A soup, some biscuits
dipped in Bordeaux, nothing more. If you fear gnawing at the
stomach, add a slice of roast beef, but without bread. Do not
fill the stomach. There is a rage in the provinces for inviting
you to a gala dinner when you have a lecture to give. It's the
worst of all preludes. It is in vain to try to restrain yourself.
You eat and you drink too much; you arrive at the lecture hall
chatting with the dinner company. You have infinite trouble in
recovering yourself.
Dine lightly and alone an hour beforehand; stretch yourself
for half an hour on a sofa, and take a good nap. Then go, en-
tirely alone, to where you are expected, improvising, reimprovis-
ing, pondering upon your exordium, so that when the curtain
rises you are in perfect working order; you are in form. I do
not know how the political orators manage to deliver their long
discourses after gala banquets. It is true that they generally do
not dine. I have seen some who all during the repast abstract-
edly roll balls of bread under their fingers, and only respond
vaguely with insignificant monosyllables to the tiresome talk of
their neighbors.
*"Every one taken in his own manner is pleasing in himself;
It is only another's manner that is displeasing in me. "
## p. 12835 (#257) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12835
Speak standing: one commands a fuller and stronger voice,
but especially the audience is dominated; you hold it with your
eye. Speak from behind a table, even though (according to the
rules that I have laid down) you have no notes to read, no
quotation to make, book in hand.
One is sustained by the table,
and brought around to the conversational tone. If one has
before him the wide space of the platform, in proportion as one
warms up he makes more motions, he surprises himself strid-
ing across the stage; the voice rises, and is soon no longer in
harmony with the level of the things that are to be delivered.
Beware of these balks. Watch the play of your physiognomy and
your gestures, but not too much. I leave mine to the grace of
God; what is natural, even though it be exuberant and trivial, is
worth more than a factitious and studied correctness.
Have I other recommendations to make? No, I truly believe
that I am at the end of my list. All the rest can be put into
one sentence: "Be yourself. " It is understood, is it not, that it
is necessary first to be some one? You now know the processes
which I have used, which I still use.
FURTHER HINTS ON LECTURING
From 'Recollections of Middle Life. Copyright 1893, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
You
ou have to speak, we will suppose, of 'Le Cid' by Corneille.
Do not weary yourself at first by reading all that has been
written on 'Le Cid': steep yourself in the play, think of
it, turn it over and over, go to see it if it is being played: if
neither the reading nor the representation of the drama suggests
to you any impression that is properly yours-good gracious,
my friend! what would you have me say? Don't meddle with
lecturing either on 'Le Cid' or any other theme drawn from
literature. Manifestly you are not born for the trade.
But if you have shuddered and thrilled at a given passage; if
there has been presented to your mind some comparison that has,
so to speak, sprung from the depths of your reading; if you have
yourself formed an opinion upon the whole or upon some scenes
of the work, you must cling to that: it is that which must be
told, it is that which I call having something to say.
-
## p. 12836 (#258) ##########################################
12836
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
Do not trouble yourself to know if others have thought it
before you, and have said it perhaps even better than you will
say it yourself. That is not the question. The idea, however old
it may be, will appear new; and will be so, indeed, because you
will strongly impress upon it the turn of your mind, because you
will tinge it unconsciously with the colors of your imagination.
As you will have made it flash from the reading, as you will
yourself have drawn this truth from its well, your passion will
go out to it, you will naturally put into its expression a good
faith, a sincerity, a transport, the heat of which will be com-
municated to the public.
Not until you have performed this first task, the only neces-
sary one, the only efficacious one, shall I permit you- pay atten-
tion: permit you, not advise you to read what your predecessors
have thought of 'Le Cid,' and written about it. If by chance
you run across some interesting point of view that had escaped
you, and that strikes you, take care, for the love of heaven, not
to transfer it just as it is to your lecture, where it would have
the mischievous effect of second-hand and veneer. No: take up
'Le Cid' anew; re-read it with this idea, suggested by another,
in mind; put that back into the text in order to draw it out
yourself, rethink it, make it something of your own; forget the
turn and the form given it by Sainte-Beuve, from whom it first
came to your notice. If you cannot succeed in taking possession
of it, in melting it so well in the crucible of your mind that it
will be no longer distinguished from the matter in fusion which
is already bubbling there, better discard it, however pleasing,
however ingenious it may be:
Be assured there will be nothing good in your lecture but
what you shall have thought for yourself; and what you shall
have thought for yourself will always have a certain seal of ori-
ginality. You have thought that Chimène sacrifices her love to
her duty, that Rodrigue is a hero boiling over with love and
youth, that Don Diègue is an epic Gascon. Do not embarrass
yourself with scruples, and repeat to yourself in a whisper, “But
every one has said that. ”
-
Every one has said it! So much the better, because there is
some chance that your audience will be enchanted, seeing you
plunged up to your ears in the truth. But every one has not
said it as you will say it; for you will say it as you have
thought it, and you have thought it yourself.
## p. 12837 (#259) ##########################################
12837
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
(1826-1886)
SUCCESS So splendid and so sustained as that which has attended
'Ekkehard' and the Trumpeter of Säkkingen,' has not be-
fore been witnessed in the history of German literature. It
is safe to regard as final an emphatic popular verdict, which has not
only stood unreversed but has annually been reaffirmed in the course
of nearly half a century. The Trumpeter' was published in 1854,
'Ekkehard' in the following year; in 1895 the former reached its two
hundred and sixteenth edition, the latter passed its one hundred and
forty-third. This great and growing demand
is the plébiscite of two generations; and
the decision of this high court of appeal
has gone in favor of Scheffel's claim to a
poet's immortality.
Joseph Victor von Scheffel was born at
Karlsruhe on February 16th, 1826; and there,
sixty years afterward, he died on April 9th.
He was another example of the young
man of many capabilities who fails at first
to find the right one. His father was an
engineer, and the son's talent for drawing
was inherited; the poetic gift came from
his mother, who, besides other works, had
written a drama which was produced at
the court theatre of Karlsruhe. But young Scheffel, through the per-
sistence of his parents, was forced to study law and prepare himself
for the career of a government official. After taking his degree he
held several public positions, and practiced law at Säkkingen.
J. V. VON SCHEFFEL
During the six years which he spent in this uncongenial employ-
ment it was his ardent desire to become a painter. At last in 1852
he abandoned his profession, and went to Rome. Fortunately, how-
ever, his friends and his own failures soon made it clear to him that
he had mistaken the direction of his genius; and the man who three
years later had completed the most popular German poem and the
most popular German novel of the century, retired to Capri in the
depths of despondency because he could not paint.
During the winter at Capri and Sorrento, he sought to comfort
himself in his disappointment by shaping the memories of his Rhine-
## p. 12838 (#260) ##########################################
12838
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
land home into the half playful, half melancholy romance of the
'Trumpeter of Säkkingen. ' The success of this poem was not im-
mediate. Scheffel returned to Germany, determined to produce a
scholarly work on the history of the Middle Ages. The 'Monumenta
Germaniæ Historica' formed a part of his systematic studies; and in
these his imagination was captivated by the Chronicles of St. Gall.
At St. Gall, and at the foot of the Hohentwiel, he spent his
Easter vacation, writing the opening chapters of 'Ekkehard. ' It was
finished at Heidelberg early in 1855. Upon the novel and the poem
together his fame was firmly established. This period of his great-
est productivity was the happiest period of his life. His high spir-
its found expression in the rollicking student songs which appeared
under the title of 'Gaudeamus. ' These songs are now the permanent
possession of the university youth of Germany, to whom they have.
doubly endeared the poet's name. The volume has passed its sixti-
eth edition.
But these happy days fled swiftly. The severe mental strain of
two years of uninterrupted literary creation left Scheffel a nervous
wreck. He planned several more historical works; but in each case
his painstaking preparations broke down his weakened health, and
his task was left unfinished. The death of his sister in 1857 was a
blow from which his spirits never recovered. The gay poet and con-
vivial student became gradually a morose and disappointed man. He
married in 1864 Fräulein von Malzen, the daughter of the Bavarian
ambassador; but his shattered nerves and erratic habits made him
an incompatible companion, and a separation followed two years later.
He wrote many more tales and novels, but none ever attained the
popularity of the first two works. The poet's fiftieth birthday was
celebrated by all Germany; and the Grand Duke of Baden conferred
upon him a patent of hereditary nobility. The last years of his life.
were spent in melancholy retirement on his estate at Radolfszell on
Lake Constance, where he had once been wont to play the generous
but eccentric host. Soon after the attainment of his sixtieth birthday
he died. On the great terrace of Heidelberg Castle stands his statue
in bronze.
It is only by comparison with 'Ekkehard' and the 'Trumpeter'
that Scheffel's other works may be called unsuccessful. Frau Aven-
tiure' (Lady Adventure) reached some twenty editions, and 'Juni-
perus five. Both works are parts of a broadly planned attempt to
portray the features of the olden time when the Nibelungenlied at
last assumed its classic form. The scheme was never carried out,
and the scholarly element in these detracts somewhat from their
directness of appeal; but the graphic touch is not altogether lost. A
lyric play called 'Der Brautwillkomm auf Wartburg' (Welcoming the
Bride on the Wartburg) was likewise a product of these mediæval
## p. 12839 (#261) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12839
studies, as were also the 'Bergpsalmen (Mountain Psalms). These
psalms appeared in 1870. Ten years later came Waldeinsamkeit '
(Woodland Solitude); which with 'Der Henri von Steier' (Henry of
Styria), and an ancient tale of Hugideo' (1884), completes the list of
the poet's works.
In a century which began with Scott and ends with Sienkiewicz, a
discussion of the historical novel as an allowable form of art would
be academic. In Germany, Hauff's 'Lichtenstein' (1826), modeled
after Scott, was the first distinctively historical novel of import-
ance. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer attained a high mastery of form in
this genre; but it is to Scheffel that we must look for the one clas-
sic example and supreme achievement. In 'Ekkehard' he skillfully
avoids the dangers of partisanship, in the delineation of well-known
characters and in the interpretation of famous events, by seeking
rather to show the thoughts, ambitions, and customs of the age in the
daily life of convent and castle; while the onrush of history is heard
only from afar,—coming for a moment, in the attack of the Huns,
to the very gates of the monastery. The book is an authentic pict-
ure of the tenth century in Suabia. Even had such men and women,
such conditions, such events, never had their actual counterparts, the
work would be still instinct with life; for its vitality is in no wise
dependent upon its historical setting. Scheffel in his own charming
preface asserts that "neither history nor poetry will lose anything by
forming a close alliance. " This depends, it is true, upon the genius
of the man who makes the treaty; but in 'Ekkehard' men will long
continue to enjoy the vivid and faithful presentation of a picturesque
age, in which the elements of poetry and history are exquisitely
blended.
<
The Trumpeter' is a romantic love tale full of playful humor
and graceful trifling, sustained by a true and tender sentiment. Of
course the humble trumpet-blower marries the high-born maiden in
the end. In its rhythmic measures the poem reminds one of Heine's
'Atta Troll'; but it is kindlier and born of a serener mood than that
brilliant piece of bitterness, in which the old Romantic School, expir-
ing, laughed in frivolous self-ridicule. Gentleness, chivalry, and love
are the themes of Scheffel's Rhineland romance; and the satirical
blows of Hiddigeigei are delivered with velvet paws.
Scheffel has himself declared that the ironical flavor of his poetry
was the result of an underlying melancholy. The events of 1848,
although he was an ardent advocate of a united Fatherland, failed
to stir him; and the hopeless, reactionary period that followed made
him a political pessimist. "My soul," he said, "took on a rust in
those days which it will never wear off. " His humor was a con-
scious concealment of an essentially melancholy disposition; and as
## p. 12840 (#262) ##########################################
12840
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
the years wore on, he was less and less able to maintain his mental
disguise. He lived in an atmosphere of medievalism, and there is
a natural touch of antiquity in his style which removes the last trace
of pedantry from his historical pictures. His mild mockery and de-
lightful drollery have an old-time flavor that mellows the effect; and
his work is wholesome and refreshing through its pure and healthy
sentiment.
REJECTION AND FLIGHT
From 'Ekkehard. Copyright 1895, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
E
KKEHARD remained long sitting in the garden bower; then he
rushed out into the darkness. He knew not whither his
feet were carrying him.
In the morning he found himself on the top of the Hohen-
krähen, which had stood silent and deserted since the forest
woman's departure. The remains of the burnt hut lay in a con-
fused heap. Where the living-room had once been, the Roman
stone with the Mithras was still to be seen. Grass and ferns
grew over it, and a blindworm was stealthily creeping up on the
old weather-beaten idol.
Ekkehard burst into a wild scornful laugh.
"The chapel of St. Hadwig! " he cried, striking his breast with
his clenched hand. "Thus it must be ! "
He upset the old Roman stone, and then mounted the rocky
crest of the hill. There he threw himself down and pressed his
forehead against the cool ground, which had once been touched
by Frau Hadwig's foot. There he remained for a long time.
When the scorching rays of the midday sun fell upon him, he
still lay there, and slept.
-
Toward evening he came back to the Hohentwiel, hot and
haggard, and with an unsteady gait. Blades of grass clung to
the woolen texture of his cowl.
The people of the castle timidly stepped out of his way, as if
before one on whose forehead ill-luck had set her seal. In other
times they had been wont to come toward him to entreat his
blessing.
The duchess had noticed his absence, but made no inquiries
about him. He went up to his tower, and seized a parchment,
## p. 12841 (#263) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12841
as if he would read.
«<
It was Gunzo's attack upon him. Will-
ingly I would exhort you to aid him with healing medicine; but
I fear, I sadly fear, that his disease is too deeply rooted,"
what he read.
He laughed. The arched ceiling threw back an echo; he
leaped to his feet as if he wanted to find out who had laughed
at him.
Then he went to the window, and looked down into the
depths below. It was deep, deep down: a sudden giddiness came
over him; he started back.
The small phial which the old Thieto had given him stood
near his books. It made him melancholy. He thought of the
blind old man! "The service of women is an evil thing for him
who wishes to remain good," he had said when Ekkehard took
leave.
He tore the seal off from the phial, and poured the Jordan
water over his head and drenched his eyes. It was too late.
Whole floods of holy water will not extinguish the inward fire,
unless one plunges in never to rise again.
Yet a mo-
mentary feeling of quiet came over him.
"I will pray," said he. "It is a temptation. "
He threw himself on his knees: but soon it seemed to him
as if the pigeons were swarming round his head, as they did on
the day when he first entered the tower room; but now they had
mocking faces, and wore a contemptuous look about their beaks.
He got up and slowly descended the winding staircase to the
castle chapel. The altar below had been a witness of earnest de-
votions on many a happy day. The chapel was, as before, dark
and silent. Six ponderous pillars, with square capitals adorned
with leaf-work, supported the vault. A faint streak of daylight
fell in through the narrow windows. The recesses of the niche
where the altar stood were but faintly illuminated; the golden
background of the mosaic picture of the Redeemer alone shone
with a soft glitter. Greek artists had transplanted the forms of
their church ornaments to the German rock. In a white flowing
garment, with a gold-red aureole round his head, the Savior's
emaciated figure stood there, with the fingers of the right hand
extended in the act of blessing.
Ekkehard bowed before the altar steps; his forehead rested
on the stone flags. Thus he remained, wrapt in prayer.
"O Thou who hast taken the sorrows of the world on thyself,
send out one ray of thy grace on me unworthy. "
## p. 12842 (#264) ##########################################
12842
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
He raised his head and gazed up, as if he expected the earnest
figure to step down from the wall and hold out his hand to him.
"I am here at thy feet, like Peter, surrounded by tempest,
and the waves will not bear me up! Save me, O Lord! save me
as thou didst him when thou didst walk over the raging billows,
extending thy hand to him and saying, 'O thou of little faith,
wherefore dost thou doubt? › »
But no sign was given him.
Ekkehard's brain was giving way.
There was a rustling through the chapel like that of a woman's
garments. He heard nothing.
Frau Hadwig had come down under the impulse of a strange
mood. Since she had begun to bear a grudge against the monk,
the image of her late husband recurred oftener to her mind.
Naturally, as the one receded into the background, the other
must come forward again. The later reading of Virgil had also
been responsible for this, as there had been said so much about
the memory of Sichæus.
The following day was the anniversary of Herr Burkhard's
death. With his lance and shield by his side, the old duke lay
buried in the chapel. His tomb at the right of the altar was
covered by a rough stone slab. The eternal lamp burned dimly
over it.
A sarcophagus of gray sandstone stood near it, resting
on small clumsy pillars with Ionic capitals; and these again
rested on grotesque stone animals. This stone coffin Frau Had-
wig had had made for herself. Every year, on the anniversary
of the duke's death, she had it carried up and filled with corn
and fruits, which were distributed among the poor,- the means
of living coming from the resting-place of the dead. It was a
pious ancient custom.
―
To-day it was her purpose to pray on her husband's grave.
The duskiness of the place concealed Ekkehard's kneeling figure.
She did not see him.
Suddenly she was startled from her devotions. A laugh, sub-
dued yet piercing, struck her ear. She knew the voice. Ekke-
hard had risen and recited the following words of the Psalms:-
"Hide me under the shadow of thy wings,
From the wicked that oppress me,
From my deadly enemies who compass me about.
With their mouth they speak proudly. "
## p. 12843 (#265) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12843
He spoke it in an ominous tone. It was no more the voice of
prayer.
Frau Hadwig bent down beside the sarcophagus: she would
gladly have placed another on it to hide her from Ekkehard's
view. She no longer cared to be alone with him. Her heart
beat calmly now.
He went to the door.
Then suddenly he turned back. The everlasting lamp was
softly swinging to and fro over Frau Hadwig's head. Ekkehard's
eye pierced the twilight.
With one bound,- quicker than
that which in later days St. Bernard made through the cathedral
at Speier when the Madonna had beckoned to him,- he stood
before the duchess. He gave her a long and penetrating look.
She rose to her feet, and seizing the edge of the stone sar-
cophagus with her right hand, she confronted him. The ever-
lasting lamp over her head still gently swung to and fro on its
silken cord.
·
"Blessed are the dead: prayers are offered for them," said
Ekkehard, interrupting the silence.
Frau Hadwig made no reply.
"Will you pray for me also when I am dead? " continued he.
overtops in authority many new and brill-
iant confrères. He has been a voluminous
writer; he has been an incessant lecturer; and special gifts for main-
taining the courage of his convictions from the first have marked him
in both capacities.
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
M. Sarcey was born in 1828 at Dourdan, in the Department of the
Seine-et-Oise. He was an honor-pupil in the famous Charlemagne
School in Paris; and when pursuing his studies in the École Normale
in 1848, his fellow-students were About and Taine. His lively spirits
and independent ideas brought him into trouble when he was serv-
ing the Department of Public Instruction at Chaumont. He quitted
the school-teacher's desk for the newspaper office. In 1859 he began
critical work on the Figaro. He made a business of studying the
drama and dramatic criticism. He passed from the Figaro to various
other journals. Finally he became a permanent member of the staff
## p. 12826 (#248) ##########################################
12826
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
of Le Temps. To that well-known and influential newspaper he
contributes one or two articles every week in the year.
The plat-
form is also still his avocation; and his critical talks, delivered with a
charmingly colloquial manner,-a manner entirely in accord with his
theories of what a lecture should be,- are among the best attended
on the part of a public not too fond of that particular method of
receiving critical impressions.
M. Sarcey is not merely a specialist in the drama, and in the art
of acting: he is a man of fine and wide literary and artistic educa-
tion. He has a style which is like himself: clear, nervous, direct,
with touches of humor, and with occasionally the grace of true senti-
ment, but utterly opposed to the formalism which is to many writers
the only critical expression. He writes as he speaks,-off-hand, yet
never in a slipshod fashion. He has much humor, but always in good
taste. He believes in tradition on the stage; and in the making of
stage plays, he likes the melodrama better than the modern literary
play. He abhors the drama in which plot is not supreme; he hates
the faddists and the symbolists. His sense of himself is strong but
never offensive. He is respected as a philosopher of the play-house
and the play. His very weaknesses are so much a part of himself
that he would not be "Our Uncle Sarcey" without them; so no one
wishes them away. Past his middle years, he writes with the youth-
fulness of a man of twenty-five, united with the vast experience and
the maturity of a Nestor of the French theatre. His reputation is
international. All the world reads him, and nowhere else in the
world is there to be found a critic quite like him.
HOW A LECTURE IS PREPARED
From Recollections of Middle Life. ' Copyright 1893, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
HEN you have taken all your notes, when you have possessed
yourselves of at least the substance of all the ideas of
which the lecture is to be composed,-whether you have
them already arranged in fine order, or in the mass, still con-
fused, seething in your mind; when you have reached the moment
of preparation, when you no longer seek anything but the turn
to give them, the clearest, the most vivid and picturesque man-
ner in which to express them: when you are so far,-— mind, my
friend, never commit the imprudence of seating yourself at your
desk, your notes or your book under your eyes, a pen in your
## p. 12827 (#249) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12827
hand. If you live in the country, you doubtless have a bit of
a garden at your disposal; and in default of an alley of trees
belonging to you, a turn around the town where no one passes.
If you are a Parisian, you have in the neighborhood either the
Luxembourg or the Tuileries, or the Parc Monceau, or in any
case some wide and solitary street where you can dream in the
open air without too much interruption. If you have nothing of
all this, or if the weather be execrable, you have in your house
a room larger than the others: get up and walk. A lecture is
never prepared except while walking. The movement of the
body lashes the blood and aids the movement of the mind.
You have possessed your memory of the themes from the
development of which the lecture must be formed: pick out one
from the pile,— the first at hand, or the one you have most at
heart, which for the moment attracts you most, and act as if you
were before the public; improvise upon it. Yes, force yourself
to improvise. Do not trouble yourself about badly constructed
phrases, nor inappropriate words-go your way. Push on to the
end of the development, and the end once reached, recommence
the same exercise; recommence it three times, four times, ten
times, without tiring. You will have some trouble at first; the
development will be short and meagre: little by little around the
principal theme there will group themselves accessory ideas or
convincing facts, or pat anecdotes that will extend and enrich it.
Do not stop in this work until you notice that in thus taking up
the same theme you fall into the same development; and that
this development, with its turns of language and order of phrases,
fixes itself in your memory.
For, what is the purpose of the exercise that I recommend to
you? To prepare for you a wide and fertile field of terms and
phrases upon the subject that you are to treat. You have the
idea: you must seek the expression. You fear that words and
forms of phrase will fail you. A considerable number must be
accumulated in advance; it is a store of ammunition with which
you provide yourself for the great day. If you commit the im-
prudence of charging your memory with a single development
which must be definitive, you will fall into all the inconveniences
that I have brought to your attention: the effect is that of recit-
ing a lesson, and that is chilling; the memory may fail, you lose
the thread, and are pulled up short; the phrase has no longer
that air of negligence which improvisation alone gives, and which
## p. 12828 (#250) ##########################################
12828
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
charms the crowd. But you have prepared a half-dozen develop-
ments of the same idea without fixing them either in your mem-
ory or upon paper; you come before the audience. The mind
that day, if good fortune wills that you be in train, is more
alert, keener; the necessity of being ready at call communicates
to it a lucidity and ardor of which you would not have believed
yourself capable. It draws from that mass of words and phrases
accumulated beforehand, or rather that mass itself is set in
motion and runs toward it and carries it along; it follows the
flood; it has the appearance of improvising what it recites, and
in fact it is improvising even while reciting.
This is not a new method that I am inventing. The ancients,
alas! have worn the matter threadbare, and one must always go
back to the 'De Oratore' of the late Cicero. You have, I im-
agine, heard it told that Thiers, when he had an important speech
to make in the Chamber, first tried the effect of his arguments.
upon his friends and guests. He received much company, and
every evening he improvised, for a little circle of auditors, some
parts of his future speech. Visitors succeeded one another; and
he recommenced without weariness, and indeed without wearying
them, the same developments. He was firing at a target. After
all, isn't this the same kind of preparation that I have recom-
mended to you? You are not M. Thiers, you have not at hand
a series of listeners, who relieve one another to give you a
chance. I would not advise you to inflict the suffering of these
recommencements and hesitations upon your unfortunate wife.
Improvise for yourself, as if you were speaking before an audi-
ence.
It will doubtless happen more than once, in the course of
these successive improvisations, that you will hit upon a pictur-
esque word, a witty thrust, a happy phrase. Beware of storing
it in your memory, and on your return sticking it on paper like
a butterfly fastened on a blank sheet with a pin. If you bring
it to the lecture you will certainly wish to place it; and instead
of abandoning yourself to improvisation in the development of
your idea, you will be wholly occupied with directing it toward
the ingenious or brilliant sally that you have stored away.
will appear embarrassed and awkward in spite of yourself, and
three quarters of the time you will spoil the effect upon which
you counted. You will have sacrificed the thought to a mot, and
the mot will miss fire.
You
## p. 12829 (#251) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12829
That mot,-heavens! perhaps it will not be lost, though you
have taken pains to forget it. Who knows? Perhaps on some
great day, in the flow of improvisation, it will mount to the sur-
face, and you will see it suddenly spring up in the eddy of a
phrase. Oh, then throw it in boldly: it will be more attractive
from having the air of a "find," a bit of good luck.
The great principle to which we must always return is that
every lecture must be improvised; but have a care! one does
not improvise successfully before the public until one has twenty
times improvised in solitude, as one can only draw from a fount-
ain the water that one has taken care to put into it beforehand.
Many believe that at least the exordium and the peroration
may be learned by heart. It is not my opinion. I have tried.
it. I have never succeeded by that means. The most that I
would admit is, that in speaking before a new public, if one has
first to address to it some of the phrases of courtesy and thanks
demanded by custom, one may fix the expressions; because they
are pure formulas of politeness, and it is better to know them
by heart. It would be ridiculous to stumble in the phrase used
to congratulate a person on his good health or felicitate him upon
his marriage.
But every time that you have true ideas to express,—and they
enter into the exordium and the peroration as well as into the
rest, you must improvise. For the audience is always warned,
by a change of tone or manner, of the moment when the author
passes from recitation to pure improvisation, and it begins to be
distrustful; it constantly wonders if the improvisation may not
simply be an uncertain recitation; it loses confidence and resists.
You see! there is no real success to be had- I cannot too often
repeat it — unless the audience feels itself in some sort plunged,
completely bathed, in the deep and rapid flow of improvisation.
-
Even the peroration—and between ourselves, is there any
need in the lecture of what is called a peroration? The perora-
tion is the bellow of the mediocre actor upon the last verse of the
tirade. Great artists disdain the applause that it arouses. What
do you undertake to do when you speak? You wish to explain
and prove an idea. Well, when your demonstration is finished,
you put a period to it: that is the peroration. The worth of a
lecture is not in the ingenuity of an exordium, in the brilliant
fanfare of a peroration, in the number and splendor of the lus-
trously cut phrases sown through the discourse: it is in the
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
## p. 12830 (#252) ##########################################
12830
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
ensemble of its mass. Be sure that when you have faithfully
explained, developed, and revealed your idea; when you have,
with or without applause, impressed it upon the mind of your
audience, there is no success comparable to that.
Applause! flee from it as from the plague. An audience
that applauds is an audience that is given leisure from listening.
When it claps its hands, it's a sign that it is no longer bound
to the idea that you express; that it is no longer carried away,
rolled in the torrent of your discourse. It takes time to cry out
at a pretty phrase, to go into ecstasy over a flash of wit;-bad
business for you! for it forgets, while lingering to applaud
this, that which is the foundation of the lecture, the succession
of ideas and reasoning; you will have trouble in recapturing it
again.
I am so persuaded of this truth that I never leave my listen-
ers leisure to breathe. Of course it has happened to me, as to
my fellows, to touch here and there a corner of my discourse
with a more brilliant vivacity than usual, and to be conscious of
it; one is always conscious of that sort of thing. In such a case
I hardly launched the last word of the development before set-
ting out again at full speed for another series of ideas, cutting
short all tendency to applause. The confidence felt in an orator
evaporates in these bravos.
"Le vrai feu d'artifice est d'être magnanime," said M. Bel-
montet once upon a time, in a verse still celebrated.
The only
applause that counts, the only true applause, is the attention of
the audience, letting itself be so won by what you say that it no
longer thinks of the way in which you have said it.
You will doubtless be somewhat alarmed to know that it is
necessary to improvise a dozen times, and often more, each of
the subjects for development of which a lecture is composed.
You think to yourself that that is a tremendous task.
Yes, my
friends, there is nothing so long and so preoccupying as the prep-
aration of a lecture; you must make up your mind to it, if you
expect to follow that career. You will spend much time and
pains on it. Reassure yourselves, however: the work will become.
easier and more rapid as the habit of doing it grows with you.
Among these themes of development, as each lecturer approaches
only the subjects which relate to his studies and are within his
*True brilliancy comes from greatness of spirit. "
## p. 12831 (#253) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12831
range, some will often present themselves anew, and will only
require a summary preparation.
This humus of which I just now spoke to you— this prepared
heap of turns of speech, of exact and picturesque words — will
naturally grow richer; you will have it right at hand, and it will
serve the occasion without fresh effort.
There will come a time when, even with themes that are new
to you, you will no longer need, in order to establish the devel-
opment, ten or twelve successive improvisations. You will be
astonished to find with what facility, all at once, accessory ideas
and convincing facts will spring from the first improvisation, and
arrange themselves about the principal idea to sustain and clear
it. It will always be delicate work, but it will no longer be so
painful or so distressing. In a few hours, spread over two or
three days, you will get through the preparation of a lecture;
on condition, be it understood,—it is a prime condition,-of fully
possessing your subject.
You have improvised -picking them out one after the other
just as they came-each of the themes, so that it only remains
to put them in their place on the day of the final improvisation.
One of the great anxieties of a novice in lecturing is to know
how to pass from one theme to another; what Boileau called the
labor of transition, which used to give us blue terror in college.
Permit me to give you, just here, an axiom which I only suc-
ceeded in formulating after much reflection and many attempts:
In lecturing there is no transition.
When you have finished one development you enter upon
another; as at dinner, when you have eaten the soup you pass
to the entrée, and then to the roast. If there is no connection
between two ideas that succeed one another in your discourse,
what use is there in an imitation of one? When you speak, dis-
trust little strokes of finesse, tricks of style, bits of false ele-
gance: all this is worth nothing and serves no purpose. When
you have finished the explanation and the demonstration of the
idea, say honestly, if you must say something, "We have done
with that theme: let us pass to the next. "
But the best way would be to say nothing at all, and to enter
upon another order of development, with no warning but a short
silence.
If, on the contrary, there is a connection between the two
themes, do not disturb yourself,-you do not need expressly to
## p. 12832 (#254) ##########################################
12832
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
. mark it. It is useless to take the trouble to throw a bridge
between the two ideas: the moment that you, the orator, leap
from one to the other, the audience must leap after you, borne
on by the same impulse. The transition is no more than the
movement of your thought, that the audience necessarily follows
if you keep a firm hand upon it.
Ah, bless me! you, the lecturer, must have always present
to your mind, even through any digression you permit yourself,
your principal idea, and must not let your audience forget it;
you will have no trouble in leading them back when you yourself
return. And if by chance you are so far removed from it that
you do not know what road to take to reach it again, the sim-
plest way is frankly to announce your embarrassment. "It seems
to me that we are straying - where was I? Ah! I wished to
demonstrate to you that" and there is the thread picked up,
without great art, I confess: but I have remarked that the public
likes very well to have you make a confidant of it; speak to it
with open heart; if need be, ask counsel from it. It would not
do to make an artifice, a trick, of this means of exciting inter-
est and sympathy: the public is very sharp; it would easily see
that you played upon its credulity, and would range itself against
you. But if you have truly lost the thread, do not fear to say
frankly, "I do not know where I am put me on the right
track. " If a word escapes you, ask some one to prompt you.
They probably will not do so; but you will have had time to
find it while they search for it, or an excuse for not having
found it any sooner than the others. This excuse would not be
permitted to a man who recites, for it would pass for a failure
in memory; and to be brought up by a defeat of memory is the
worst that can happen in lecturing, as in the theatre and in the
pulpit. Laughter breaks forth invincibly. It never offends in
an orator who improvises; it may even please by a certain air
of sincerity and good-fellowship.
Is there a special tone and style for the lecture, as there is
for academic discussions,- for the pulpit, for the Sorbonne, for
the bar? That is a point to be looked into.
What is a lecture? It is, properly, to hold a conversation with
many hundreds of persons, who listen without interrupting. It
may be said, in general, that the tone of the lecture should be
that of a chat. But there it is, there are as many tones for
chatting as there are people who chat. Each one talks according
-
## p. 12833 (#255) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12833
to his temperament, his cast of mind, his turn of thought; each
talks as he is: and that which is pleasing in a chat is precisely
the discovery in it of the physiognomy of the talker. I can give
you only one piece of advice on this point: try to be, through
art, when once seated in the lecturer's chair, that which you nat-
urally are in your drawing-room, when you talk with five or six
persons and when you engross the conversation. Hear yourself
speak, observe yourself,- these introspections are become very
easy to us, thanks to the habit that we have contracted of analyz-
ing ourselves, and bend all your efforts to producing a lecture,
not according to your neighbor, who perhaps speaks better than
you, but yourself, only yourself, accentuating if possible the ren-
dering of your principal traits. I will condense my counsels in
this formula, which is not so humorous as it seems: It is permit-
ted you, it is even recommended to you, to have a "make-up »
for the lecture; but the "make-up" must be your own.
Your entire personality must shine forth in your discourse.
And that is the especial service rendered by this method of suc-
cessive improvisations that I have just prescribed for you. While
you are thus improvising alone, face to face with yourself, with-
out any witness to inspire you with a desire to pose, you are
free; you unconsciously set your entire being in full swing. The
mold is taken; you spread your personality before the public;
you are no longer a more or less eloquent, more or less affected
orator,—you are a man; you are yourself.
To be one's self: that is the essential thing.
Among the young lecturers discovered in these later times,
there is not one who has more quickly acquired a greater or
more legitimate reputation than M. Brunetière. Nevertheless
there is not one further removed in speaking from the ordinary
tone of familiar conversation. It would seem that the lecture, as
he practices it, would hardly come within the definition we have
given of the species, a conversation with an audience that holds.
its tongue. But what would you have ? That is the way that
Brunetière talks, and he talks as he is. He is a man of doc-
trine, who loves to dogmatize; he feels an invincible need of
demonstrating that which he advances, and to force conviction.
on those who hear him. He manœuvres his battalions of argu-
ments with a precision of logic and an ardor of temperament
that are marvelous. The phrases fall from his authoritative lips
with an amplitude, correctness, and force to which everything
XXII-803
---
___
## p. 12834 (#256) ##########################################
12834
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
bends. He is to be found entire in his lecture: the lecture is
excellent, then, because it is of him; or rather, because it is he.
Old Boileau had already expressed these truths in some verses
that are not among his best known:-
"Chacun pris dans son air est agréable en soi;
Ce n'est que l'air d'autrui qui peut déplaire en moi. ” *
If I should try to talk like Brunetière, I should be execrable:
it is possible, on the other hand, that if Brunetière tried to appro-
priate some of my methods he would not succeed; because, to
tell the truth, my air of good-fellowship, my familiarities of lan-
guage, my jovial anecdotes interspersed with frank laughter, my
unpolished and torrent-like phrases, are not methods, they are all
of a piece with myself; it is all I-a little more I perhaps
than I ordinarily am, but Brunetière is also probably a little more
himself in his lecture than in his chimney-corner at home.
May I be permitted to end these reflections on the art of the
lecturer with some practical advice?
Never dine before the lecture hour. A soup, some biscuits
dipped in Bordeaux, nothing more. If you fear gnawing at the
stomach, add a slice of roast beef, but without bread. Do not
fill the stomach. There is a rage in the provinces for inviting
you to a gala dinner when you have a lecture to give. It's the
worst of all preludes. It is in vain to try to restrain yourself.
You eat and you drink too much; you arrive at the lecture hall
chatting with the dinner company. You have infinite trouble in
recovering yourself.
Dine lightly and alone an hour beforehand; stretch yourself
for half an hour on a sofa, and take a good nap. Then go, en-
tirely alone, to where you are expected, improvising, reimprovis-
ing, pondering upon your exordium, so that when the curtain
rises you are in perfect working order; you are in form. I do
not know how the political orators manage to deliver their long
discourses after gala banquets. It is true that they generally do
not dine. I have seen some who all during the repast abstract-
edly roll balls of bread under their fingers, and only respond
vaguely with insignificant monosyllables to the tiresome talk of
their neighbors.
*"Every one taken in his own manner is pleasing in himself;
It is only another's manner that is displeasing in me. "
## p. 12835 (#257) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12835
Speak standing: one commands a fuller and stronger voice,
but especially the audience is dominated; you hold it with your
eye. Speak from behind a table, even though (according to the
rules that I have laid down) you have no notes to read, no
quotation to make, book in hand.
One is sustained by the table,
and brought around to the conversational tone. If one has
before him the wide space of the platform, in proportion as one
warms up he makes more motions, he surprises himself strid-
ing across the stage; the voice rises, and is soon no longer in
harmony with the level of the things that are to be delivered.
Beware of these balks. Watch the play of your physiognomy and
your gestures, but not too much. I leave mine to the grace of
God; what is natural, even though it be exuberant and trivial, is
worth more than a factitious and studied correctness.
Have I other recommendations to make? No, I truly believe
that I am at the end of my list. All the rest can be put into
one sentence: "Be yourself. " It is understood, is it not, that it
is necessary first to be some one? You now know the processes
which I have used, which I still use.
FURTHER HINTS ON LECTURING
From 'Recollections of Middle Life. Copyright 1893, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
You
ou have to speak, we will suppose, of 'Le Cid' by Corneille.
Do not weary yourself at first by reading all that has been
written on 'Le Cid': steep yourself in the play, think of
it, turn it over and over, go to see it if it is being played: if
neither the reading nor the representation of the drama suggests
to you any impression that is properly yours-good gracious,
my friend! what would you have me say? Don't meddle with
lecturing either on 'Le Cid' or any other theme drawn from
literature. Manifestly you are not born for the trade.
But if you have shuddered and thrilled at a given passage; if
there has been presented to your mind some comparison that has,
so to speak, sprung from the depths of your reading; if you have
yourself formed an opinion upon the whole or upon some scenes
of the work, you must cling to that: it is that which must be
told, it is that which I call having something to say.
-
## p. 12836 (#258) ##########################################
12836
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
Do not trouble yourself to know if others have thought it
before you, and have said it perhaps even better than you will
say it yourself. That is not the question. The idea, however old
it may be, will appear new; and will be so, indeed, because you
will strongly impress upon it the turn of your mind, because you
will tinge it unconsciously with the colors of your imagination.
As you will have made it flash from the reading, as you will
yourself have drawn this truth from its well, your passion will
go out to it, you will naturally put into its expression a good
faith, a sincerity, a transport, the heat of which will be com-
municated to the public.
Not until you have performed this first task, the only neces-
sary one, the only efficacious one, shall I permit you- pay atten-
tion: permit you, not advise you to read what your predecessors
have thought of 'Le Cid,' and written about it. If by chance
you run across some interesting point of view that had escaped
you, and that strikes you, take care, for the love of heaven, not
to transfer it just as it is to your lecture, where it would have
the mischievous effect of second-hand and veneer. No: take up
'Le Cid' anew; re-read it with this idea, suggested by another,
in mind; put that back into the text in order to draw it out
yourself, rethink it, make it something of your own; forget the
turn and the form given it by Sainte-Beuve, from whom it first
came to your notice. If you cannot succeed in taking possession
of it, in melting it so well in the crucible of your mind that it
will be no longer distinguished from the matter in fusion which
is already bubbling there, better discard it, however pleasing,
however ingenious it may be:
Be assured there will be nothing good in your lecture but
what you shall have thought for yourself; and what you shall
have thought for yourself will always have a certain seal of ori-
ginality. You have thought that Chimène sacrifices her love to
her duty, that Rodrigue is a hero boiling over with love and
youth, that Don Diègue is an epic Gascon. Do not embarrass
yourself with scruples, and repeat to yourself in a whisper, “But
every one has said that. ”
-
Every one has said it! So much the better, because there is
some chance that your audience will be enchanted, seeing you
plunged up to your ears in the truth. But every one has not
said it as you will say it; for you will say it as you have
thought it, and you have thought it yourself.
## p. 12837 (#259) ##########################################
12837
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
(1826-1886)
SUCCESS So splendid and so sustained as that which has attended
'Ekkehard' and the Trumpeter of Säkkingen,' has not be-
fore been witnessed in the history of German literature. It
is safe to regard as final an emphatic popular verdict, which has not
only stood unreversed but has annually been reaffirmed in the course
of nearly half a century. The Trumpeter' was published in 1854,
'Ekkehard' in the following year; in 1895 the former reached its two
hundred and sixteenth edition, the latter passed its one hundred and
forty-third. This great and growing demand
is the plébiscite of two generations; and
the decision of this high court of appeal
has gone in favor of Scheffel's claim to a
poet's immortality.
Joseph Victor von Scheffel was born at
Karlsruhe on February 16th, 1826; and there,
sixty years afterward, he died on April 9th.
He was another example of the young
man of many capabilities who fails at first
to find the right one. His father was an
engineer, and the son's talent for drawing
was inherited; the poetic gift came from
his mother, who, besides other works, had
written a drama which was produced at
the court theatre of Karlsruhe. But young Scheffel, through the per-
sistence of his parents, was forced to study law and prepare himself
for the career of a government official. After taking his degree he
held several public positions, and practiced law at Säkkingen.
J. V. VON SCHEFFEL
During the six years which he spent in this uncongenial employ-
ment it was his ardent desire to become a painter. At last in 1852
he abandoned his profession, and went to Rome. Fortunately, how-
ever, his friends and his own failures soon made it clear to him that
he had mistaken the direction of his genius; and the man who three
years later had completed the most popular German poem and the
most popular German novel of the century, retired to Capri in the
depths of despondency because he could not paint.
During the winter at Capri and Sorrento, he sought to comfort
himself in his disappointment by shaping the memories of his Rhine-
## p. 12838 (#260) ##########################################
12838
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
land home into the half playful, half melancholy romance of the
'Trumpeter of Säkkingen. ' The success of this poem was not im-
mediate. Scheffel returned to Germany, determined to produce a
scholarly work on the history of the Middle Ages. The 'Monumenta
Germaniæ Historica' formed a part of his systematic studies; and in
these his imagination was captivated by the Chronicles of St. Gall.
At St. Gall, and at the foot of the Hohentwiel, he spent his
Easter vacation, writing the opening chapters of 'Ekkehard. ' It was
finished at Heidelberg early in 1855. Upon the novel and the poem
together his fame was firmly established. This period of his great-
est productivity was the happiest period of his life. His high spir-
its found expression in the rollicking student songs which appeared
under the title of 'Gaudeamus. ' These songs are now the permanent
possession of the university youth of Germany, to whom they have.
doubly endeared the poet's name. The volume has passed its sixti-
eth edition.
But these happy days fled swiftly. The severe mental strain of
two years of uninterrupted literary creation left Scheffel a nervous
wreck. He planned several more historical works; but in each case
his painstaking preparations broke down his weakened health, and
his task was left unfinished. The death of his sister in 1857 was a
blow from which his spirits never recovered. The gay poet and con-
vivial student became gradually a morose and disappointed man. He
married in 1864 Fräulein von Malzen, the daughter of the Bavarian
ambassador; but his shattered nerves and erratic habits made him
an incompatible companion, and a separation followed two years later.
He wrote many more tales and novels, but none ever attained the
popularity of the first two works. The poet's fiftieth birthday was
celebrated by all Germany; and the Grand Duke of Baden conferred
upon him a patent of hereditary nobility. The last years of his life.
were spent in melancholy retirement on his estate at Radolfszell on
Lake Constance, where he had once been wont to play the generous
but eccentric host. Soon after the attainment of his sixtieth birthday
he died. On the great terrace of Heidelberg Castle stands his statue
in bronze.
It is only by comparison with 'Ekkehard' and the 'Trumpeter'
that Scheffel's other works may be called unsuccessful. Frau Aven-
tiure' (Lady Adventure) reached some twenty editions, and 'Juni-
perus five. Both works are parts of a broadly planned attempt to
portray the features of the olden time when the Nibelungenlied at
last assumed its classic form. The scheme was never carried out,
and the scholarly element in these detracts somewhat from their
directness of appeal; but the graphic touch is not altogether lost. A
lyric play called 'Der Brautwillkomm auf Wartburg' (Welcoming the
Bride on the Wartburg) was likewise a product of these mediæval
## p. 12839 (#261) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12839
studies, as were also the 'Bergpsalmen (Mountain Psalms). These
psalms appeared in 1870. Ten years later came Waldeinsamkeit '
(Woodland Solitude); which with 'Der Henri von Steier' (Henry of
Styria), and an ancient tale of Hugideo' (1884), completes the list of
the poet's works.
In a century which began with Scott and ends with Sienkiewicz, a
discussion of the historical novel as an allowable form of art would
be academic. In Germany, Hauff's 'Lichtenstein' (1826), modeled
after Scott, was the first distinctively historical novel of import-
ance. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer attained a high mastery of form in
this genre; but it is to Scheffel that we must look for the one clas-
sic example and supreme achievement. In 'Ekkehard' he skillfully
avoids the dangers of partisanship, in the delineation of well-known
characters and in the interpretation of famous events, by seeking
rather to show the thoughts, ambitions, and customs of the age in the
daily life of convent and castle; while the onrush of history is heard
only from afar,—coming for a moment, in the attack of the Huns,
to the very gates of the monastery. The book is an authentic pict-
ure of the tenth century in Suabia. Even had such men and women,
such conditions, such events, never had their actual counterparts, the
work would be still instinct with life; for its vitality is in no wise
dependent upon its historical setting. Scheffel in his own charming
preface asserts that "neither history nor poetry will lose anything by
forming a close alliance. " This depends, it is true, upon the genius
of the man who makes the treaty; but in 'Ekkehard' men will long
continue to enjoy the vivid and faithful presentation of a picturesque
age, in which the elements of poetry and history are exquisitely
blended.
<
The Trumpeter' is a romantic love tale full of playful humor
and graceful trifling, sustained by a true and tender sentiment. Of
course the humble trumpet-blower marries the high-born maiden in
the end. In its rhythmic measures the poem reminds one of Heine's
'Atta Troll'; but it is kindlier and born of a serener mood than that
brilliant piece of bitterness, in which the old Romantic School, expir-
ing, laughed in frivolous self-ridicule. Gentleness, chivalry, and love
are the themes of Scheffel's Rhineland romance; and the satirical
blows of Hiddigeigei are delivered with velvet paws.
Scheffel has himself declared that the ironical flavor of his poetry
was the result of an underlying melancholy. The events of 1848,
although he was an ardent advocate of a united Fatherland, failed
to stir him; and the hopeless, reactionary period that followed made
him a political pessimist. "My soul," he said, "took on a rust in
those days which it will never wear off. " His humor was a con-
scious concealment of an essentially melancholy disposition; and as
## p. 12840 (#262) ##########################################
12840
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
the years wore on, he was less and less able to maintain his mental
disguise. He lived in an atmosphere of medievalism, and there is
a natural touch of antiquity in his style which removes the last trace
of pedantry from his historical pictures. His mild mockery and de-
lightful drollery have an old-time flavor that mellows the effect; and
his work is wholesome and refreshing through its pure and healthy
sentiment.
REJECTION AND FLIGHT
From 'Ekkehard. Copyright 1895, by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.
E
KKEHARD remained long sitting in the garden bower; then he
rushed out into the darkness. He knew not whither his
feet were carrying him.
In the morning he found himself on the top of the Hohen-
krähen, which had stood silent and deserted since the forest
woman's departure. The remains of the burnt hut lay in a con-
fused heap. Where the living-room had once been, the Roman
stone with the Mithras was still to be seen. Grass and ferns
grew over it, and a blindworm was stealthily creeping up on the
old weather-beaten idol.
Ekkehard burst into a wild scornful laugh.
"The chapel of St. Hadwig! " he cried, striking his breast with
his clenched hand. "Thus it must be ! "
He upset the old Roman stone, and then mounted the rocky
crest of the hill. There he threw himself down and pressed his
forehead against the cool ground, which had once been touched
by Frau Hadwig's foot. There he remained for a long time.
When the scorching rays of the midday sun fell upon him, he
still lay there, and slept.
-
Toward evening he came back to the Hohentwiel, hot and
haggard, and with an unsteady gait. Blades of grass clung to
the woolen texture of his cowl.
The people of the castle timidly stepped out of his way, as if
before one on whose forehead ill-luck had set her seal. In other
times they had been wont to come toward him to entreat his
blessing.
The duchess had noticed his absence, but made no inquiries
about him. He went up to his tower, and seized a parchment,
## p. 12841 (#263) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12841
as if he would read.
«<
It was Gunzo's attack upon him. Will-
ingly I would exhort you to aid him with healing medicine; but
I fear, I sadly fear, that his disease is too deeply rooted,"
what he read.
He laughed. The arched ceiling threw back an echo; he
leaped to his feet as if he wanted to find out who had laughed
at him.
Then he went to the window, and looked down into the
depths below. It was deep, deep down: a sudden giddiness came
over him; he started back.
The small phial which the old Thieto had given him stood
near his books. It made him melancholy. He thought of the
blind old man! "The service of women is an evil thing for him
who wishes to remain good," he had said when Ekkehard took
leave.
He tore the seal off from the phial, and poured the Jordan
water over his head and drenched his eyes. It was too late.
Whole floods of holy water will not extinguish the inward fire,
unless one plunges in never to rise again.
Yet a mo-
mentary feeling of quiet came over him.
"I will pray," said he. "It is a temptation. "
He threw himself on his knees: but soon it seemed to him
as if the pigeons were swarming round his head, as they did on
the day when he first entered the tower room; but now they had
mocking faces, and wore a contemptuous look about their beaks.
He got up and slowly descended the winding staircase to the
castle chapel. The altar below had been a witness of earnest de-
votions on many a happy day. The chapel was, as before, dark
and silent. Six ponderous pillars, with square capitals adorned
with leaf-work, supported the vault. A faint streak of daylight
fell in through the narrow windows. The recesses of the niche
where the altar stood were but faintly illuminated; the golden
background of the mosaic picture of the Redeemer alone shone
with a soft glitter. Greek artists had transplanted the forms of
their church ornaments to the German rock. In a white flowing
garment, with a gold-red aureole round his head, the Savior's
emaciated figure stood there, with the fingers of the right hand
extended in the act of blessing.
Ekkehard bowed before the altar steps; his forehead rested
on the stone flags. Thus he remained, wrapt in prayer.
"O Thou who hast taken the sorrows of the world on thyself,
send out one ray of thy grace on me unworthy. "
## p. 12842 (#264) ##########################################
12842
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
He raised his head and gazed up, as if he expected the earnest
figure to step down from the wall and hold out his hand to him.
"I am here at thy feet, like Peter, surrounded by tempest,
and the waves will not bear me up! Save me, O Lord! save me
as thou didst him when thou didst walk over the raging billows,
extending thy hand to him and saying, 'O thou of little faith,
wherefore dost thou doubt? › »
But no sign was given him.
Ekkehard's brain was giving way.
There was a rustling through the chapel like that of a woman's
garments. He heard nothing.
Frau Hadwig had come down under the impulse of a strange
mood. Since she had begun to bear a grudge against the monk,
the image of her late husband recurred oftener to her mind.
Naturally, as the one receded into the background, the other
must come forward again. The later reading of Virgil had also
been responsible for this, as there had been said so much about
the memory of Sichæus.
The following day was the anniversary of Herr Burkhard's
death. With his lance and shield by his side, the old duke lay
buried in the chapel. His tomb at the right of the altar was
covered by a rough stone slab. The eternal lamp burned dimly
over it.
A sarcophagus of gray sandstone stood near it, resting
on small clumsy pillars with Ionic capitals; and these again
rested on grotesque stone animals. This stone coffin Frau Had-
wig had had made for herself. Every year, on the anniversary
of the duke's death, she had it carried up and filled with corn
and fruits, which were distributed among the poor,- the means
of living coming from the resting-place of the dead. It was a
pious ancient custom.
―
To-day it was her purpose to pray on her husband's grave.
The duskiness of the place concealed Ekkehard's kneeling figure.
She did not see him.
Suddenly she was startled from her devotions. A laugh, sub-
dued yet piercing, struck her ear. She knew the voice. Ekke-
hard had risen and recited the following words of the Psalms:-
"Hide me under the shadow of thy wings,
From the wicked that oppress me,
From my deadly enemies who compass me about.
With their mouth they speak proudly. "
## p. 12843 (#265) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12843
He spoke it in an ominous tone. It was no more the voice of
prayer.
Frau Hadwig bent down beside the sarcophagus: she would
gladly have placed another on it to hide her from Ekkehard's
view. She no longer cared to be alone with him. Her heart
beat calmly now.
He went to the door.
Then suddenly he turned back. The everlasting lamp was
softly swinging to and fro over Frau Hadwig's head. Ekkehard's
eye pierced the twilight.
With one bound,- quicker than
that which in later days St. Bernard made through the cathedral
at Speier when the Madonna had beckoned to him,- he stood
before the duchess. He gave her a long and penetrating look.
She rose to her feet, and seizing the edge of the stone sar-
cophagus with her right hand, she confronted him. The ever-
lasting lamp over her head still gently swung to and fro on its
silken cord.
·
"Blessed are the dead: prayers are offered for them," said
Ekkehard, interrupting the silence.
Frau Hadwig made no reply.
"Will you pray for me also when I am dead? " continued he.
